Entrepreneur Wins $625 Million Payout From Apple

http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/10/entrepreneur-wins-625-million-verdict-against-Apple.html

by ryanwaggoner • 16 years ago

52 50 16 years ago

inc.com

aresant• 16 years ago

These images do a good job illustrating the similarties between coverflow and scopeware:

http://www2.freedownloadscenter.com/ReviewImages/s1025.jpg

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/graphics/screenshots/10503519...

And a review of the original patents via Apple Insider 2008:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/lawsuit_target...

An interesting 5 year old Google answers thread about the fate of Scopeware ->

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/603242.html

DevX101• 16 years ago

aresant's last link is very interesting. I have a suspicion that a lazy lawyer posted that thread, and never bothered up to follow up on licensing.

$625M later...

bialecki• 16 years ago

Wow, Longhorn is cited as putting them out of business. If only they could've seen the future...

bmelton• 16 years ago

You've just touched on why the 'release early, release often' mantra, in some cases, makes sense.

If he were in fact going to be beaten by Longhorn (who knows), it's likely that Apple would have gotten him anyway, but this proves that giving up on the rumor that Microsoft is swinging into your space is naive, pussy-footed thinking at its finest.

If, in fact, Longhorn WAS his only threat, he would have had what, 6 years in which to prosper, and possibly even dominate as a 'preferred' alternative to what Microsoft was offering.

He did just fine on his own, of course, so the conversation is moot.

kls10• 16 years ago

I am glad the mobile world is blowing up in global thermo nuclear patent war. I hope that it will be so bloody that it leaves a bad taste in everyone mouth for a long time in regards to software patents. I am happy to see a little guy win who was actually trying to push software based on his patent rather than a patent troll or Apple but I would have rather he had not had a case due to software not being patentable. I think the mobile space highlights the damage that software patents do.

napierzaza• 16 years ago

Apple might have lost this time. But the only winners are the big companies when it comes to patents. MS and others have a huge portfolios that crushes everyone who does anything like what they have a patent for. Why are you glad? Do you think patent laws will be overturned by this in the future? They're all just going to continue playing the same game.

kls10• 16 years ago

Why are you glad?

No one can win at the game they are playing, it was always mutually assured destruction, when it came to the big players suing the big players. Apple made a move on HTC thinking that they where not a big enough fish to start a meltdown. Their analysis was wrong, it did. Now with the big fish not focusing on their core competency it gives others an opportunity in the market. The mobile patent wars has grown to big for any of them to control, now the only way they will be able to draw it to an end will be to lobby for patent reform. There is no doubt in my mind that these wars are close to boiling over into the desktop market. Until someone mistepped and started the unwinable war, it was a game stack against the little guy and a tool used exclusively on them. Now the weapon has been turned on the wielders, which was the logical first step that had to happen before any weight would be put behind reform.

bhiggins• 16 years ago

More like failed entrepreneur who turned bitter. First blamed Microsoft, now Apple. Maybe he should blame himself.

kjksf2• 16 years ago

His motivations are irrelevant.

The problem is with the patent system that allows getting monopoly for minor (however useful they might be) ideas and awards mind-boggling damages after long and costly trials.

Blaming actors in that system is not helpful because it changes focus from relevant (the patent system is broken) to irrelevant (motivations of people or companies that take advantage of the system).

maxawaytoolong• 16 years ago

Interestingly, he was a victim of the Unabomber.

From Wikipedia:

In 1993, Gelernter was critically injured opening a mailbomb sent by Theodore Kaczynski, who at that time was an unidentified but violent opponent of technology, dubbed by the press as "the Unabomber".[2] He recovered from his injuries but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged. He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

evo_9• 16 years ago

Stupid tiny iPhone arrows... Sorry I downvoted you when I was trying opposite. I upvoted 2 other post to rectify.

sasvari• 16 years ago

yeah, that was also my first association when I read Gelernter. remembered him from the movie Das Netz:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Netz

tav• 16 years ago

He has also made some significant contributions to computer science — linda/tuple spaces in particular have been extremely influential in distributed computing. Not to mention his sci-fi works.

seles• 16 years ago

There's getting to be so many patents that it might be harder to determine if original software you've written is patented than actually developing it.

cvg• 16 years ago

I'm curious to know how the technology is used after a patent suit like this. Do companies like Apple usually license the patented technology or do they remove the offending code?

I imagine there could be a lot more money involved if the appeals are shot down.

turboway• 16 years ago

I am interested to see when a broader coalition against the existing patent system is forming. or even if ...

The world of patents has become perverted in recent years: patents are seen as valuable things in themselves – the more the merrier – irrespective of whether they do, truly, promote innovation. Worse: in the world of software, they are actually brakes on that innovation, particularly as they begin to interact and form impenetrable patent thickets.

http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Is-Microsoft-running-o...

dkasper• 16 years ago

David Gelernter is an interesting guy; I remember hearing him on NPR's OnPoint talking about his book Judaism: A Way of Being. Link if anyone's interested: http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/12/david-gelernter

pwpwp• 16 years ago

Mirror Worlds patents that are probably the issue here:

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=XJ4SAAAAEBAJ

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=pcASAAAAEBAJ

Personally, I find it outrageous for an academic to demand credit for "inventing" displaying files side by side, searching files by content, and archiving files by time. The Sumerians probably already did this.

megablast• 16 years ago

Sure, they did it. But they didn't do it on a computer. Then on the internet. Then on a mobile device. They are all completely different issues, worthy of an extra patent or two.

I am just waiting for the next big thing, so I can patent everything all over again. Do you think iPads count as computers or a completely new device?

dstein• 16 years ago

Pretty much all software patents boil down to "method of organizing information".

gargantuan• 16 years ago

I'll just file a patent on a business method profiting from patents on methods of organizing information.

Tichy• 16 years ago

My first reaction was the same. However, I bet Apple tried to patent these things, too. So it would be sort of balancing justice - you want software patents, let them bite you...

gojomo2• 16 years ago

I have mixed feelings about this.

I think Gerlernter is an important computer science visionary. There are still good ideas for today's interfaces in his 1993 book predating the web 'Mirror Worlds'.

But I also don't think he deserves $625 million for having patented some of his ideas/predictions about computer interfaces.

In his own writings, the tone is often prophetic: not "here's my nifty invention" but "this is the inevitable path we're on". Seeing what everyone else will see a few years early is a valuable skill; it's not so valuable it needs to be rewarded with a 20-year patent monopoly.

qjz• 16 years ago

But he followed up by forming a company, developing, and shipping actual software based on these ideas. This doesn't look like mere patent trolling.

tyng2• 16 years ago

He may have tried, but his execution wasn't anywhere near Apple's. Instead of suing Apple for money, he should have praise Apple for making his vision a reality

gojomo2• 16 years ago

I didn't, and wouldn't, use the words 'patent troll' for this case. My concern is more subtle.

Let's say I've got a novel idea right now of a wondrous invention, the Thneed. I'm the first in the world to conceive and refine the idea to implementability.

But, like everything else, it has precursors and dependencies, and will only be a hit if introduced at the right time. And, in our giant economy with lots of smart people, I was lucky to put the pieces together first.

If I were hit by a bus on the way to the patent office, two other people will come up with essentially the same Thneed idea next month. And if they meet each other, conspire to control the market, but then die from sharing a spoiled toxic Zagnut -- well, in two more months, four other people will independently arrive at the same idea. And by this time next year, hundreds will have independently realized it.

Further, the idea while wonderful may still, for hard-to-understand reasons, not be able to support a business for another 10 years. The infrastructure isn't there; the consumers need education; a critical mass of complementary products aren't yet available in enough places for economic production at scale. So my early conception isn't a boon to society, but only -- via either my speculation skills or a patent-granted monopoly -- a boon to me. By the time society needed my invention, it'd be 'obvious' to thousands of people.

Why grant patents in such a situation? They're not accelerating progress; they're arbitrarily reassigning the benefits of progress to a few lucky people. Patents may be retarding progress by encouraging overinvestment in prediction and speculative patent filing.

If these situations are rare, and situations where the patent incented a necessary invention are common, then patents are still net-worthwhile. But if these 'assign profits a little early' situations dominate, then even if patents sometimes incent valuable inventions, then patents are a net-loss.

With Gelernter, I haven't read his patents -- as engineers wiser than me have suggested that for software, lay coders reading patents can only get you in trouble. But I have read Gelernter's other writings -- essays and op-eds and book excerpts -- as he's a tenured professor. And the tone of those is: "here are my predictions". Or "this is right and inevitable". Even if his patents are intelligent refinements on what he saw as inevitable, that makes me think his inventive claims fall into the 'prescient but not economically necessary' category. It's wasteful for society to grant patent bonanzas for that level of insight. Those insights deserve accolades and tenure and investment-to-productize and consulting fees, but not a legal monopoly.

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

Prior art: Zoomracks. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoomracks

GHFigs2• 16 years ago

"Steven Jobs may be no inventor, but to his credit he recognized elegance when he saw it and understood its significance." -- David Gelernter, in his 1998 book Machine Beauty.

About ten pages after the above quote, Gelernter describes pretty much everything this suit was about in some detail, e.g. a use of the "time travel" metaphor very much like Time Machine's Finder interface, wherein the whole interface reverts to a previous state. Even if you don't agree with the verdict (or the damages, yikes) it's unthinkable after reexamining this book that folks at Apple didn't get some ideas from Gelernter's work, perhaps without even realizing it.

Incidentally, it is a great book that I highly recommend.

kls10• 16 years ago

Sure they did, The iPhone was a eerily similar concept to a device patented in the late seventies or early eighties. I wish I could dig up the link, but man it looked like a wholesale copy of this patent. Multi-touch and everything. Someone at Apple is rifling through old patents for ideas.

b-man• 16 years ago

Not exactly patented, but the concepts behind tablets, smartphones, and the PC itself can be traced directly to -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

kls10• 16 years ago

As well there are a good deal of precidence of Apple doing this:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Konfabulator_Inventor...

http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/08/08/apples-research-rip-of...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/apple-tablet-ebook/

http://gizmodo.com/5046463/apple-admits-british-man-invented...

tyng2• 16 years ago

The verdict would suggest, and it's a common misunderstanding to think that, the person who comes up with the idea first is more important for innovation than the person who executes it. This is encouraging talkers and discouraging doers.

Yes Gelernter may be the first person that came up with the "mirror world" idea (not to mention he has already made money from the books he sold), but instead of suing Apple for money, he should have praise Apple for making his vision a reality.

atomical• 16 years ago

If the world worked this way no one would innovate because the bigger players would start their copy machines every time someone with courage and a few great ideas sought to change the world.

If someone has a plan to rid us of the patent system and protect innovation I have yet to hear it...

kls10• 16 years ago

The real world does not work that way, there is a lot of time, energy and risk put into success. The big players tend to opt for purchasing the little guy because the time, energy and risk have already been accounted for. Even the big guys fail at endeavors so many times it makes more sense to acquire the small guys who has mixed the formula correctly.

kjksf2• 16 years ago

This is a common claim but easily debunked.

We know that patent protection is not necessary for innovation. Patents are relatively new invention (1623 in UK per Wikipedia). And yet there were so many things invented before that, of much more fundamental nature than any software patent.

Second argument is an economic thought experiment. Let's say there is no word processing software yet and there's a million dollars to be made in word processing software. If we go by your "no innovation without monopoly" rule, no one will invent word processing out of fear that someone else will take part of the possible profits.

That's complete bollocks. If there's money in it, people will do it. Patents are more likely to be harmful because they limit competition and lack of competition hurts customers with higher prices for existing stuff and less possibility to build on stuff that has been done before. This case shows this well: the guy's idea might be swell, but do we really expect everyone to either not to anything similar in the future or pay him $625 million for the privilege? Does anyone really claims that given billions of educated people on the planet no one would come up with this idea independently even if this one guy kept it to himself?

kls10• 16 years ago

Again why? Apple did not praise Google for Android or Microsoft for windows, no they sued them, well in the case of Android they went after the handset makers because Google's portfolio would have done more damage to Apple than Apple's to Google. Under the rules of the current game why should this guy be any different? Because he is small, Why are the little guys to praise the big guys while the Big guys sue the little guys if they do the same.

gallerytungsten• 16 years ago

Notice it says Apple is going to appeal. Of course, they'll drag this out a while, and will likely settle for a much lower number in the end.

niallsmart• 16 years ago

Coverflow wasn't even developed in-house at Apple, they acquired it. According to wikipedia "Cover Flow was conceived by artist Andrew Coulter Enright[1] and originally implemented by an independent Macintosh developer, Jonathan del Strother. Enright later named the interaction style fliptych to distinguish it from the particular Cover Flow implementation.[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Flow

VladRussian• 16 years ago

a really bad thing about current patents (enforcement) is that it redistributes significant resources - time&money - from possibly productive purposes in an engineering company to [both sides] lawyers' pockets. A "40% patent layers tax". A parasitic drag if to speak aerodynamically.

jrockway• 16 years ago

Excellent. When software patents start costing huge companies $625 million a pop, they'll be gone Real Soon.

dctoedt• 16 years ago

Or monkey see, monkey do - the huge companies might instead redouble their efforts to get their own patents. Years ago Microsoft got nailed by Stac for infringement of a patent on disk compression techniques (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_laws...), which seems to have spurred Microsoft into applying for patents of its own.

jonhendry• 16 years ago

Gelernter isn't exactly what I think of when I read "entrepreneur". Technically, I suppose he is, but I just think of an entrepreneur as someone with more on the line.

It's like the old joke about the chicken and the pig and their commitment to breakfast. He's the tenured chicken providing the idea eggs, not the pig providing the bacon and working to make a viable business.

Entrepreneur Wins $625 Million Payout From Apple

Related Stories